Dead Server

My home server which hosted most of my Java sites crashed a couple times last week then just decided to stop booting after a while. My theory is that it's a victim of nearly 4 years of thermal abuse -- a dual athlon in a room that could sometimes reach 80 degrees fahrenheit or above in these transitional months between winter and air-conditioned summer.

I emailed Rimu Hosting and had them beef up my VPS I have with them, and I moved most everything out there over the couple days that followed. Everything seems to be running nicely out there, so now I must question how much of a server I really need here in the house. While planning my next server, I've had to drop back to the trusty 10-year-old p5-200 to serve as the firewall.

All in all, crashing servers and emergency migrations are quite stressful and distracting from the normal daily activities, but it's affording me the opportunity to do some things I should have done a while ago.

Update (26 April 2006): I may miss my old serve a bit.